To say that Rachel Blau DuPlessis has built her entire poetic project on the logic of the provisional and the contingent is no exaggeration. And reader, make no mistake — she has married us to this process. In the School of DuPlessian Midrash every seam and suture is exposed as a subject of instigation cum investigation. Investigation, in Drafts, is not simply a prod to the ethical; it’s heuristic: in teaching us how to read Drafts, Drafts teaches us how to read. … Had she done nothing else but write such groundbreaking studies as Writing Beyond the Ending: Narrative Strategies of Twentieth-Century Women Writers; H.D.: The Career of That Struggle; Genders, Races, and Religious Cultures in Modern American Poetry, 1908–1934; and the trilogy of genre-bending works The Pink Guitar: Writing as Feminist Practice, Blue Studios: Poetry and Its Cultural Work, and the forthcoming Purple Passages: Pound, Eliot, Zukofsky, Olson, Creeley, and the Ends of Patriarchal Poetry, she would have secured her reputation as a major voice in modernist and contemporary literary studies. But of course, there are the poems.

From Jacket #4 (1998)

How shall I articulate with what I hear? Not indulge an emotional reaction prompted in me nor assert the conceptual “grasp” which actually is a standing-back and leads to adopting a position, a self-testing consciousness which demeans its occasion. One way to engage is interlock through metaphor, but this too preens into consistency.

I shall resist the bad faith of consistency, or so I mused in closing down my applications, bestowing a good-weekend smile on my secretary, checking travelcard present and leaving an unprecedented twelve minutes before habitual time of departure. Yes, to resist consistency, but refrain too from flattering reality by granting it the variety it claims so flagrantly. I am open! I receive all tendencies! Set aside your received ideas! This is the CCCP embrace; but I who idled six years on the Cam's banks permit myself a weary smile. Nothing over-pronounced.

For the heterogeneity itself represents a reassuring consistency — the consistency of CCCP. But the middle-aged are sensitive to change in old haunts, and this year change was discernible. Had the animadversions of Messrs Evans and Moxley in their admirable Dictionary of Received Ideas drawn a little blood? There were signs of organisation — frustrated gestures perhaps; but starting with a little brochure of considered design and for Cambridge improvident with information.

From Jacket #3 (April 1998)

Noel King: What role do you think the small press plays in relation to the overall culture of book publishing?

Russell Chatham: My view of things, and it’s promoted by being physically distant from any publishing centres, derives from the fact that I was discouraged by experiences I had with larger publishers. As time has passed it seems they have taken less and less interest in what you might call serious books, or literary books, and look primarily toward large-profit items. And I suppose you can’t blame them: this is the world they live in and that seems to be what’s happening. That’s a discouraging situation for a lot of writers. When I started Clark City Press, it was always going to be a very small press; we could only think of publishing five to eight books a year. This was a lot for us but not much relative to the possibilities out there. And one of the things that was an eye-opener for me was how many manuscripts came unsolicited to us; hundreds, if not thousands, many of which were eminently publishable. What that showed me was how many serious writers had nowhere to turn, they were scratching at every possible opportunity to get their work published. And then you realise that the larger, traditional publishing houses aren’t picking up on these works. According to the sources I have, those companies no longer even have readers. Twenty years ago a person could say, “send a manuscript in to Doubleday” and somebody would sit down and read it and if it was good, they might even consider publishing it. That doesn’t exist any more. So, particularly for younger people or people just starting out, it’s a very discouraging landscape to view.

Though the fall semester looms and summer poetry staycations near their ends, the Jacket2 mail bin remains full of the latest publications from international presses. The list below highlights our most recent aquisitions. Reviewers: email taransky@writing.upenn.edu to get involved in reviewing for Jacket2.

Recently received for review

It's the truth. Summer in the Jacket2 office is not a vacation. Because I'm still here, and not there (on the beach or looking at the beach). So, I'm calling this what it is: a poetry staycation, where the poems come to me and they come from places I would like to travel to.

& it has been an amazing staycation so far: with books coming in over the past few weeks from locales including Toronto, Manchester, Brooklyn, Seattle, and Minneapolis.

These poetry books are the many guided tours of the wonderful world of poetics. They are tourist-adored maps of famous people's houses. They are waiting in line to get through airport security to not miss their connecting flight. And they are stopping at a rest stop for rest.

SHARE YOUR NEWS: We’re delighted to hear from you. Don’t hesitate to let us know about emergent poetry happenings, archival resources, and other projects that engage you. We can’t promise coverage, but we’re happy to share news when we can: info@jacket2.org.

VISIT THE JACKET ARCHIVE: Jacket2maintains a full, searchable archive of Jacket magazine issues 1–40, published between 1997 and 2010 by John Tranter, a database of more than a thousand pieces of criticism on contemporary poetry in addition to more than a thousand original works by poets from around the world. Jacket magazine: “The prince of online poetry magazines … The design is beautiful, the contents awesomely voluminous, the slant international modernist and experimental.” — The Guardian

Clouds, Umbria 2009; photo by John Tranter.

ABOUT JACKET2: Jacket2 offers commentary on modern and contemporary poetry and poetics. We publish articles, reviews, interviews, discussions and collaborative responses, archival documents, podcasts, and descriptions of poetry symposia and projects. We also publish discursive explorations and transcriptions of material in the PennSound archive. Features in Jacket2 present a wide range of materials about and responses to the work of a single poet or group, and might include reissued or original poems.